Notes

1 heavy adverbial, meaning 'slowly, sluggishly; laboriously' (OED 2). It also may reflect the character of the horse which bears the poet. Horses were believed, like all living things, to have an individual temperament based on the relative dominance of the four humours in their bodies: as Thomas Blundeville puts it, 'And if the earth have sovereignty [in the temperament of a horse], then he is black of colour, or a mouse dun, and therewith fearful, faint-hearted, dull and heavy', The Order of Dieting Horses (1593), fo. 3a. The ideal horse is hot, moist, and dominated by the humour of blood.

2–4 When … friend when the only rest and repose which my destination offers me after my laborious journey is the thought that each mile I have travelled has taken me further from my friend (which is no rest at all)